The conduct of former San Diego Police Officer Anthony Arevalos, now serving more than eight years in prison, has generated a spate of civil lawsuits against the city and raised questions about whether command staff condoned improper behavior.

Fourteen plaintiffs have sued the department. Eleven cases have settled, with the city agreeing to pay $1.55 million combined to the plaintiffs, the City Attorney’s Office said. Three suits are pending.

Two of the remaining cases portray a department that fails to discipline wayward officers, with a command staff that provides special protections to certain employees and their families and to other law enforcement professionals. The allegations are contained in testimony from officers drummed out amid corruption allegations themselves.

The department strongly disputes any suggestion of a culture of corruption.

“Trust within the community is essential and maintaining that trust has always been a priority of the department,” spokesman Lt. Kevin Mayer said.

In a July deposition, an 18-year veteran of the department testified that police officials routinely hide officer misdeeds from the public. The officer was called as a witness by the city in a lawsuit brought by a woman named only as Jane Doe in court papers who was molested by Arevalos in a convenience store restroom.

Officer Arthur Perea testified that commanders favor officers who are “in the club” over others who are not.

“A lot of things that happened on the San Diego Police Department don’t ever hit the media,” said Perea, who quit in 2011 amid an investigation by El Cajon police of a complaint by a Point Loma Nazarene University student that he sexually assaulted her. “A lot of misconduct.”

Asked in the deposition to be more specific, Perea replied, “Officers getting arrested for DUI off duty. DUI crashes. Beating up prostitutes. Pursuits involving other law enforcement agencies while off duty. Sex on duty. And those — and the code of silence is that the department keeps it quiet and does not release it to the media or outside of the department.”

Perea was never charged in the rape case.

A former sergeant testified under oath in the Doe case that he was taught not to ticket other officers, prosecutors or investigators for traffic violations when he was training at the police academy decades ago.

That witness, 27-year veteran Kevin Friedman, also admitted to destroying a dozen or more citations for friends throughout his career — and said many others in the department did the same.

Friedman resigned last year after pleading no contest to destroying a traffic citation. He was accused of fixing tickets for a prosecutor. His testimony may help explain a data analysis last year by U-T Watchdog of the department’s most prolific ticket writers, showing that 1 out of every 79 citations goes missing.

Background

Friedman also said he let law enforcement officials’ children slide when they were caught in legal scrapes, which he said was a department practice, until he decided some were abusing the privilege.

“I personally realized that some kids felt entitled and were not taking responsibility,” Friedman said at his May deposition.

‘Virtual green light’

One of the other ongoing suits against the department accuses Chief Bill Lansdowne of creating “a virtual green light (for officers) to commit misconduct without the possibility of sanctions.”

That plaintiff, identified in court records as Jane Roe, claims she was sexually assaulted by Arevalos in 2010 and that his supervisor refused to investigate or contact Internal Affairs when she reported the attack.

According to that complaint, Lansdowne disbanded the anti-corruption unit shortly after becoming chief and changed the way complaints against officers are logged to limit their review.

“Lansdowne did this to try to keep complaints in house at each station house where the supervisor of the officer complained of would handle it,” the suit alleges. “In most cases, the supervisors took no action ...”

One event uncovered by U-T Watchdog last year is referenced in the Jane Doe case testimony.

A gang detective crashed his city-owned patrol car into a roadside utility box in December 2012 and a DUI investigation was delayed for hours while the driver summoned his department friends to the scene.

The detective eventually pleaded guilty to alcohol-related charges. City Attorney Jan Goldsmith forwarded information about the conduct of Blackford’s friends on the force to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis, who found no charges were warranted.

Independent review

The city has empaneled a volunteer group called the Citizens’ Review Board on Police Practices.

The appointees do not conduct independent investigations. They rely on the department’s Internal Affairs division for the information they use to determine whether complaints are valid.

According to three recent quarterly reports, the board exonerated or ruled unfounded 147 of 172 complaints, or 85 percent. Thirteen complaints were sustained, about 1 in every 13.

Brian Buchner, a volunteer director of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, said public officials must respond to citizen complaints deliberately and effectively.

“It’s incumbent upon a law enforcement agency to take those (allegations) seriously,” said Buchner, a special investigator for the Los Angeles Police Commission. “You’re talking about serious misconduct, in a lot of cases potential criminal acts.”

Michael Marrinan is a downtown attorney who built his practice winning misconduct lawsuits against the San Diego Police Department and other law enforcement agencies.

He said the best way to prevent litigation is to enforce rules — and penalties — against misconduct.

“The departments where we see fewer complaints are the departments where the chief makes it absolutely clear to the officers that he or she will not condone misconduct, that action will be taken and it will not be covered up,” he said.

That is not Marrinan’s experience with the San Diego command staff.

“The sergeants are not holding the troops accountable,” he said. “In many cases, they are covering up.”

Lansdowne declined to be interviewed about the allegations. Mayer, the department spokesman, said in written responses to questions that the department reviews every charge of police misconduct thoroughly.

“Chief Lansdowne has made it very clear to department members that a ‘Code of Silence’ and/or any attempt to cover up wrongdoings of employees will not be tolerated,” he wrote. “The Chief has demonstrated this through his words and actions.”

Among the changes Lansdowne instituted over the years to improve the oversight process, Mayer said, was boosting the Internal Affairs staff and creating an anonymous tip line.